Creating a game? Get a lawyer

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He did say that many would-be and existing clients ask if they can simply copy other games' EULAs, and said he strongly cautions against doing so, in part because the agreements should be written to be specific to the needs and requirements of each individual game, and because EULAs are copyrightable documents.

And players might not ever think about it, but Boyd suggested a great deal of thought should go into issues such as whether disputes are handled through arbitration or litigation, whether players must scroll all the way to the bottom before clicking the "I Agree" button, how information from children should be handled, and what the agreement says about what can happen with personal information if the company is sold.

"Imagine if Google comes to you with a $500 million check," Boyd said, "and your privacy policy didn't say it could sell your (account) information. How are you going to get out of that?"

Another important issue Boyd talked about--particularly in light of Bragg v. Linden Research, a case currently in federal court in which a Second Life user sued the virtual world's publisher for the value of his virtual assets after he was banned--is the customer service issue of how game companies treat such assets.

"If you grant intellectual property in (user's) stuff," Boyd said, "there are a lot of legal obligations you now have by holding (on developers' servers) their intellectual property."

The key issue here, especially in the case of a virtual world like Second Life and its publisher, is what legal liability comes from the developer acknowledging the monetary value of virtual assets. Many game developers get around this by insisting that virtual goods like game currency, weapons, clothing and the like have no value. But others use the value of such goods as marketing.

And that crosses some potential legal lines that have yet to be fully worked out in the courts, Boyd said, echoing the issues raised in the Bragg case.

"Granting intellectual property rights to people, and placing and acknowledging monetary value on assets," Boyd said, "creates a tension the law may not allow."

Referring to the question of what the law says about what rights developers and consumers have over valuable virtual assets, Boyd said, only half-joking, "The moral of the story is that there is an emerging tension that no one can answer clearly yet, and it probably varies from country to country. One thing it guarantees is employment for a number of lawyers."

[play7]

What?

How in the hell did Second Life get in to this matter? Oh PLEASE! Stop this shameless jokee of a PR game!

[menotbug]

Re: WHAT?

Oh come on, it's entirely appropriate for the article. It's not like it's telling you to play the game for chrissake.

[asdf]

Software Patents are garbage law, on it's way to the trash can

Software patent attorneys are little more than the mafioso, attempting to inject themselves into economic transactions they have no business in, in order to extort a "fee for services".

The reality is, software has always been developed very nicely without patents. If patent attorneys had shown up sooner, do you think software would be at the level it is today? There wouldn't even BE an internet except for a few very rich companies who used to as a "competitive advantage". The internet for the rest of us would be some far-off thing of the future that we were dimly aware of thanks to that article in Newsweek. We'd hear is was SO expensive that economist projected it would be 2080 before anything similar could be expected for the general public.

The proof of history is clear: patents are NOT needed for innovation and therefore there is no moral, economic or philosophical basis for their presence in our industry.

The Constitution clearly states that the purpose of patents is to promote the useful arts and sciences. If a patent doesn't serve that function, no patent is to be issued. Software patents don't serve any function except to put a brake on innovation and create a new class of mafioso-middleman, the patent attorney.

So they found some LAWYER to get up in front of a bunch of productive, goal directed, intelligent creative types and tell them that THEY can't do business without HIM. That they have to pay the stupid lawyers of this world a fee, a tax, a rent, a tribute, in order that they should be permitted to continue to create.

So they found some LAWYER to intimidate and scare a bunch of high IQs into believing they all owe stupid, Armani-wearing, greasy-haired, dirtbag LAWYERS millions of dollars in order to create and make a living -

data point: it costs 1 million per patent per claim to defend your patent in court. What's YOUR bank account look like.

So they found a LAWYER to demoralize and depress a group of smart people into believing that no creation can take place outside of the corporate fiefdom of established players because no independent can afford to play THEIR game.

I think this is known as eliminating the competition before it can get started.

What do established players whose corporate hierarchy chokes and kills every creative impulse and whose sole purpose is to put another line of blow up the noses of their white-trash CEOs fear more than anything else?

You.

You and your fresh ideas and your fresh perspective.

What are they going to DO about YOU? They're going to terrorize you and demoralize you into believing that you cannot live without them and that the fee for the continuing to be able to generate your own thoughts and realize them in code is to be the submissive rendering of your best ideas and creative years to them, your corporate masters and their scumbag lawyers, in exchange for a short-lived career of 80 hour weeks under slave labor conditions with 10 PTO days a year.

Ahh.. la cosa nostra.... this thing of ours...

Ain't it great?? HAW HAW HAW....

Funny, but it was these same group of LAWYERS who injected themselves into the business of software in the first place. This is little more than extortion, a pay-to-play scheme of the rankest variety.

Well FPSer's - lock and load. The Supreme court takes a dim view of these bottom dwellers as Teleflex vs KSR has indicated.

To quote the Court:

"These advances, once part of our shared knowledge, define a new threshold from
which innovation starts once more. And as progress beginning from higher levels
of achievement is expected in the nor-mal course, the results of ordinary
innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws. Were
it otherwise patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful
arts.?"

Amen.

So the next time you're confronted by some dirtbag patent lawyer who wants to force you to hand over the fruits of your labor to him so he can live off your labor, just say-

"back, animal, your days are numbered. I don't OWE you anything. What? NO, I don't care that your trophy wife is going to walk as soon as she finds out you're not pulling down 8 figures. NO, I don't care about your the three kids you've got in $20 grand a year pre-school either. What? No, I don't care that flunked out of engineering school either. Get a real job. Become a productive member of society. Work for a living. And don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[chash360]

Agreed but disagreed (its all about greed)

I agree Patents have no purpose or use with software. What you want to patent Pi or some other number!?!? What if Archemides had a patent on the geometric description of a circle? Software should be protected under copyright law, just like any other publication, because that is what it is, a publication. Patents are for devices and processes. The purpose for Patents was to promote innovation by making sure the inventor or innovator could recover their investment and efforts in the developement of a new device or process. Without patents you, the Garage inventor could develope something truly innovative, and a large company could simply reverse engineer and put you in the poor house with their economies of scale, without giving you a dime! Unfortunately this system has been completely abused. Companies buy up potentially competetive patents and bury them, so they can continue to make money off their less innovative, less efficient products. Just look at the automotive industry, how many truly innovative patents have been bought up and then burried? Look through the patent archive, there are thousands of really good inventions, that have never seen the light of day because they are bought up by energy, oil, automotive, chemical and pharmecutical giants, so that they could protect their profits.

Part of the change that needs to take place is that if a company is not actively pursuing the developement of a purchased patent, that could potentially benefit society or the consumer, then they should lose all rights to that patent and it becomes public domain, or reverts to the original individual developers (personally, not their corperate employers). Secondly it should be clearly stated that Patents are to recover developement and innovation costs, and NOT to ensure profits through IP monopoly. For a patent infringement case to even be considered, the allegedly infringed, should be able to clearly document the amount of investment into the research, that has not yet been recovered from marketing and sale of such, and demostrate that the allegded infringers, have prevented them from recovering that cost. I think if these changes were made it would resolve about 80% of the roadblocks to innovation we are currently experiencing with our current patent system.

So I agree that software should not have anything to do with patents, they should be (and always should have been) covered under copyright law.

But I disagree with eliminating patents, because they do protect the investment of inventors (corperate or individual) when they are actively pursued and developed, with the intention of bringing them to market.

The biggest flaw is aquiring patents for the purpose of suppresion, or eliminating potential competition. This is what needs to change.